So, apparently Wrack had a big problem with being really dark and drab, but thanks to a new animator on the team, it's looking tons better now! :) What a huge difference playing with a few sliders in Photoshop makes, eh? Thanks, histogram!

For one, the texture brightness levels have been increased across the board. The first half or so of that video is a bunch of before/after shots of areas. Some areas also have additional lights placed to help brighten the place up. There's also some additional special effects, like screen shaking and spinning barrel debris. The bloom has also been revamped, but I'm not really trying to show that off.

Archi said:
Also, is there any way to make music volume invariable?

That whole music ducking thing doesn't seem to be working that well, so we'll probably change it up in the future.

Last update wasn't all that noteworthy, but the sexification of Wrack has resumed! We've got a new animator, and he's already having a huge impact. The level 4 miniboss, Zombo, is finally getting animated, decals now fade, and there's even more gibs (!!) in the next update, "Zomboned!" Here's the trailer:

This was in a room which you teleport into after getting the pulsar where a bunch of enemies teleport in in front of a closed door (you can see me pointing at it).

Also, I had some horrible lag on the third map. Not sure if it's some new detail changes or the monster AI since I was speeding through. Either way I doubt it should be lagging since I have i5 3570K and a GTX 670.

We just put out a hotfix today that addresses the framerate issues. I had made some changes to the animation system to support spawning things at exact bone locations (neat stuff!) and did some things which were supposed to optimize, but, well, I screwed up. Should be much better now, though.

The collision thing... hm. That update was supposed to fix falling through slopes in certain situations (kamikazes used to *love* to fall through the map in that spot), but I'm not sure what got you to fall through. Any idea if it happened on those sloped floors? In any case, I'm glad you mentioned it because I was under the impression that those issues were all fixed.

Carnevil said:
The collision thing... hm. That update was supposed to fix falling through slopes in certain situations (kamikazes used to *love* to fall through the map in that spot), but I'm not sure what got you to fall through. Any idea if it happened on those sloped floors? In any case, I'm glad you mentioned it because I was under the impression that those issues were all fixed.

No idea, unless strafe-circling at some specific angle would make you clip through floors.

It's also possible that I had gotten a momentum boost from an exploding spider bot, which would probably make it easier to get past a faulty collision check. I was too surprised when it happened to remember if there were any of those still alive...

The "tl;dr" version is that it's not the gold mine/cash grab people make it out to be (with some exceptions). Developers are still heavily incentivized to finish because the majority of people tend to avoid EA games like the plague - as they should. However, Valve treats EA games almost exactly the same as finished games, when in reality they lie somewhere on the spectrum between finished games and Kickstarter concepts. That can, and does, lead to confusion on the end of gamers expecting to play a finished, polished product.

It works though. Developers aren't disincentivized to finish, get to make all sorts of tweaks/fixes based on feedback, and are able to finance more game for the players (who also get a game early, for cheaper, and to be involved in the development process).

It's been awhile since I've done one of these, but it's a good one, so I wanted to share it with you all:

We recently brought on a new animator, and he's been helping BIG time! Not only are the new animations he's done just plain great, but there's all sorts of new animation-related features in the engine, too - like weapons affecting the camera through animations, and monsters being able to turn and look at you as they walk around. Really great stuff!

Carnevil said:
Thanks geo, but don't be proud just yet! Be proud once we finish and launch this thing! :) Until then, just trying to make this into as good of a game as possible.

I'm proud because you're one of our own. Moreso than that, I'm proud that you're still going with the game, supporting, updating, improving, upgrading and all of that. I bought into Towns. That game was quickly abandoned by the dev and well that didn't sit well with anyone a 'cash grab'.

Why thank you! I've been part of this community for a long time, and a big part of why I first started making this game is because I thought this great genre was underrepresented. We're definitely trying to forge our own identity, but it's still that same great action-packed goodness at its core. At the end of the day, I just want people to be into it and having fun.

Yeah, that sucks about what happened to Towns. A few days before, I wrote an article sticking up for Early Access, too. Timing! Oh well.

By the way, for anyone concerned about the shotgun affecting the camera too much, I had some stuff screwed up in the code so it was skewing things too much. Plus, there are options to turn that effect off entirely, or reduce it by 50%. We don't want anyone getting motion sickness.

Also did a new particle-based muzzle flash which will be in the update tomorrow. This was shot before the camera fixes, so it may still be slightly nuts! :P